One Hundred Years Beneath The Stars
by AlexTuesday
Summary: From the birth of Martha Kane to the death of Bruce Wayne; a hundred years in Gotham City. Everyone lives!AU, fusion, canon divergence. Multi-pairing.


**A/N:** I am joined by my co-author, TwistedMagic.

This fic will be a fusion-AU; we're playing hard and fast with canon, so you might regonize some things or you may not at all. This first bit might be a little slow as we build up to the bat's first flight; the next few chapters are backstories. We will be updating on the first of every month for now.

Special thanks to our betas, editors and proof-readers!

* * *

This is a story about a man.

His demons have made him a monster, and his actions have made him a legend. He is darkness incarnated, a silent night born into man.

This is a story about a bat.

This is a story about a lot of bats.

Which makes this a story about family.

And what family will do to protect what must be done.

But before we get to that, it is important to know what came before.

Let us begin.

* * *

Gotham sat on the lower coast of New Jersey, three islands curled amongst forested shorelines in the bay across from Delaware. It was a small city in breadth, some thirty square miles of towering skyline that was made of grey steel and cold concrete, salt-stained from the sea. Despite its compact size, over one and a half million people packed themselves to the breaking point, a city with as many inhabitants as Los Angeles crammed into a sliver of the size, and filled to the brim with wives waiting for their husbands to return from war, too many children and too few parents, renegade soldiers and skittish refugees, draft dodgers and criminals, rapacious entrepreneurs, the sick, the good, the hungry, the poor, the evil, the rich.

The city pulsed like a heartbeat, an unholy cesspool of too many people in too small a space, all vying for food, shelter, and money to survive and thrive. Gotham was the last stop before hell; it was unforgiving and lonely, a destination and sentence meant only for those with nowhere else to go, those with nothing left or those that had been born inside the walls. There were no movie stars or corporate bigwigs living in the crowded metropolis, few wealthy and fewer good.

The very air felt like death—heavy with factory smoke and the warmth of cooking asphalt, and filled with an odour of badly spiced food and unwashed bodies. The thunderous noise was a mix of cars, vendors, and people, all alive and bellowing to be heard. Brick hummed with the vibrations of the city. The near-constant, barely-suppressed violence that threatened to spill over onto the sidewalk at any moment had reached almost feverous heights in the pressing heat.

The summer of 1945 brought with it the last, lingering breaths of the Second World War in Europe. Gotham had loved to hate the war. It supplied a seemingly endless number of bodies to fulfill the need to shoot things, and received an equally untold number of battle fatigued wounded back.

Hundreds of years worth of trouble and mayhem had finally reached a cataclysmic climax; corruption was at an all-time high, the downtrodden at their lowest and the infinite amount of thieves, murderers, and mobsters at their most volatile and ruthless. Only a spark was needed to set the dry, heaping kindle that was the city ablaze.

And that spark came in the form of Martha Kane.

* * *

There was not much money in Gotham, but what little there was found itself shared among two classes: the old, and the greedy.

The old families of Gotham had built their city; the Waynes, Elliots, Cobblepots, Kanes, and Arkhams. They had nurtured its economical and communal growth, and constructed their towers and houses. Generation after wealthy generation used their fortunes to stamp their legacies on the thriving urban centre, each family growing equally accustomed to the unsettled nature of their chosen home. More often than not, old money was the way of Gotham - for almost none loved the city except those born into its expanse.

The old families of Gotham were dangerous people to cross in their own ways, for they had come to the city early into its history to make their money off the labour of its citizens, and stayed because doing so was easy. Some families, such as the Waynes, did so kindly, while those such as the Cobblepots did so only out of gluttonous desire. The greedy–the mafia bosses, crime syndicates, entrepreneurs businessmen and corporate companies–were often new to the scene, though no less ravenous.

But every family served a purpose, and the Kanes were no different. They were old and fair; their contracts never faltered. They had come across the ocean from Ireland during Gotham's founding and made themselves a place in the way of their new land. For they were bankers, pure and simple. They had made a name for themselves in the banking and stocks business of the growing city, most often seen in the courthouses of justice, the synagogues of the city's Jewish population, and at any event that the rich, famous, or old threw. Most of the money that circulated through Gotham flowed through their hands at one point or another, and while they were by no means excessively rich, they lived a comfortable and glamorous life.

Centuries passed in this manner.

The Kane house was almost a mansion in its vast spread, situated on the New Jersey shore across the water from Gotham's islands. Forested acres made up the Palisades' richer and more suburban area, filled with the houses of the city's rich population and the manor estates of the old families. While the Kane family had nothing on the great land of the Waynes, they had lived comfortably in a house full of uncles, aunts, grandparents and children for generations untold.

Bonnie Kane had been born into finery and simplicity, a life of quiet privilege. She completed her private education with average marks and without making ripples. She worshipped at her temple, and married a bank manager named Lawrence Brook, who had been discharged after the war draft with a limp from battle. She'd had two sons, Nathaniel and Stephen, by the time her daughter was born. The fourth child, Andrew, had been planned before her newborn girl had even breathed her first breath. Bonnie tried her best to raise her children as she had been raised in turn. Her only hope and expectation were that her children would do the same for their own.

This was Bonnie's life.

It was not her daughter's.

Bonnie met the 21st of June, 1945 with a rather short labor, and the screeching of a newborn infant in the afternoon air. Martha Kane was born rich, born Jewish, and born loud. She was also born into destiny.

Such children are not as rare as you think.

But this one was important.

* * *

Martha Kane was a problem from the moment she was born. She was wolfish and lonely. The soul and heart of Gotham blazed through her veins like liquid fire.

Her life was written in the stars and it was inked on her skin and bone. To ordinary citizens she was seen as a doll; a daughter of riches dressed in finery and surrounded by unbroken glass rules. So typical of the great tales that the princess is left in her ivory tower to be rescued, never the hero of her own stories.

But towers were destined to be toppled in the end. She was true Gotham blood; hellfire and abyssal damnation, something that is dark and unholy, with her feet set on a road she cannot abandon.

If this was a lesser, older time, she would have found Gotham a battlefield, and it would have found her worthy.

* * *

The year after Martha was born, the Waynes welcomed their newest addition that was the beginning of a new generation. Patrick and Angelina, the current heirs of the Wayne fortune, had their first and–unbeknownst to them–last son. It was as if the collective old bloodlines had sighed in relief, for Patrick's brother Silas had poor health and had not married, and their parents Kenneth and Laura had died young, before they could see any grandchildren.

Thomas Wayne was an instant favourite, and as the heir to the oldest and most noble of the rich families of Gotham, he was owed a staggering inheritance. It was also widely believed that he was destined for great things, a herald of glorious times.

If one was to believe in destiny–and all the things that went with it–then one could see that Thomas was most certainly a part of it.

But that was neither here nor now.

* * *

As a child, Martha just didn't understand.

Her brothers were loud, fast, always moving and running about, playing war games, and making noise. She would occasionally try to join in, she really did, but she was always left behind or pushed away, and it _hurt_. They even liked their baby brother Andrew, who could barely walk, more than they liked her.

The halls of the Kane estate were cold and unwelcoming; full of portraits that stared blankly with disaffection at her, fancy vases and art she was forbidden from touching, and furniture she could not climb on. While there were an almost endless number of family members moving about and living in their private rooms, the Kanes had always been of the mindset that children were meant to be seen and not heard.

Her room was too big and too quiet, her dolls were no fun, and her dresses were uncomfortable. Her parents wouldn't play with her and the nanny was rarely available because of her brothers.

As she thought all of that, in the darkness of her room, Martha's eyes began to water and she sniffed, rubbing an arm across her face. She was barely four and she already knew what it felt like to be alone.

* * *

It was December of 1950, a few days after Hanukkah. The snow had fallen on Gotham like a thick blanket and dampened the sounds of rattling buses and people finishing their Christmas shopping. The theatre the Kanes had just exited loomed in the dusk, and its bright lights made it stand out from the shuttered storefronts. Martha was five years old and she stood on the sidewalk, her dress shoes doing almost nothing against the cold, her fingers buried in a fur cuff. The engine of their car wouldn't start, and their driver tried hard not to swear as he inspected under the hood.

Her parents were noisy in their angry bickering, and it would have chilled her to the bone if the December ice hadn't already done that. She wanted to grab ahold of her mother, but Bonnie had already brushed her off; all three of her brothers had already done the same, and had continued digging through the snow to fling it at each other.

As she stood shivering she spotted a man from the corner of her eye hunched against the wall of the movie theatre.

"Dad," She hissed, yanking on his coat. " _Dad_."

"Martha, not now." Her father didn't even look at her and that _hurt_ , that when she asked she did not receive, and when she tried she failed. They wouldn't even look at her except to say _Martha, do this_ or _Martha, don't do that_. She had a _question_ –she wanted to know what he was doing there–and she needed it answered. She hadn't yet gotten the concept that _ladies don't ask questions_ , and even if she had grasped that, she would have sequentially discarded said knowledge.

But her father wasn't interested and wasn't watching, so she released her grip on his sleeve, peeked at her brothers rough-housing in the snow, and tiptoed over to the man on the ground.

Martha knew he saw her coming, because he went from looking down at the ground, huddled in his stained coat, to watching her with an almost stunned, borderline terrified look. It gave Martha confidence—someone who was _scared_ of her could not possibly hurt her.

"Why are you sitting there?" she demanded, every bit the rich kid that wanted to know, know, know.

His voice was raspy when he answered, so low that she had to lean in to hear, "I have nowhere else to go."

"Why don't you go home?" she asked. She wasn't too young to recognize that pained look in his eyes, and wasn't too young to remember and carry it with her.

"I don't have one," the man whispered.

"Why–" Martha started, but she was cut off with a high-pitched shriek of " _Martha!"_ that made both her and the homeless man wince.

Her father grabbed her hand, her mother's angry and frustrated glare now turned on her, and she was dragged away, no chance to wave goodbye. Her parents had always had a sharp bite to them, but now it was turned on full-force, and tears found themselves in her eyes all too easily.

"I don't _understand_ ," Martha whimpered after everyone had been shuffled into a waiting taxi. "I was just _talking_."

"You can't talk to people like him," her mother scowled, "they're only trouble."

"But he said he didn't have a home!" Her older brothers snickered at her tears, and Andrew who was only three years old openly giggled along with them. "How can someone not have a home?"

"They're poor, Martha," her father explained. "They don't have the money to pay for a home."

It had never occurred to Martha that one _needed_ money for a house, but now that she knew, it felt as if someone had let her in on an terrible secret. "If they don't have money, and they don't have a home, how do they live? Where do they stay?"

"They live on the streets," said her eldest brother Nathaniel, as he swung his feet and jabbed his elbows into her sides. "That's what _poor_ people do."

"But that's _awful_ ," Martha whisper, and wondered how the world got so cold.

* * *

Martha had always had someone to look after her, teach her letters and numbers, and wash her hair and put away her playthings. But by 1951, when she was six years old, she had developed a reputation as something her nannies couldn't control.

They did not always stay, a fact that was mostly attributed to her _chaotic_ _and_ _undisciplined nature_. Martha was on her seventh nanny–Ann–already, and her parents had made no small noise that it was no place for a lady to drive others to such frustrations. She didn't have enough fingers to count the times she'd been told that acting like "a complete terror" was unacceptable.

Martha thought it was just unfair because her brothers could run around all they wanted and people would _smile_ at their flushed cheeks even after they'd torn up the lawn with their races. Though if she so much as _dared_ to take off her shoes and dig her toes into the ground, there was a reckoning upon her.

But it didn't matter–because in the hidden gardens and secret corners, she could pull aside vine and bush, and find her way to the neglected spots where she had a full view of the harbour and the magnificent beast that was Gotham on the horizon.

It was perhaps the only thing that truly made Martha happy.

* * *

At some point, an idea formed.

Martha stopped spending money, and instead took her weekly allowance and deposited it in the bank account her parents set up for her. The money had been meant for sweets, clothes, and dolls, but she had no need for those, so the cash piled up. There was safety in this, she was sure of it.

She didn't really know why she stopped, but there was a voice in her head saying _homes cost money_ all over again, and sweet things had turned sour to her. It was so much easier to say _I can't find anything I like_ , and then stuff that money away.

For the first little while, Martha's parents thought it was adorable—their little girl, a banker at heart. Eventually they started thinking it was a good idea, and began depositing money directly into bank accounts for all their kids.

It got easier to get away with not spending _anything_.

Because one day, she wanted to be able to help.

* * *

Martha was nine when she discovered she liked science. She had seen a documentary about evolution the other night when the television had been left on by mistake, and it had amazed her. All of the facts and theories that the documentary had discussed had never even occurred to Martha. It was exciting to her that there was a whole world full of incredible things to discover, and that world was called _science._ It made her feel smart and grownup just to say the word aloud to herself.

So Martha walked through Kane Manor until she found the small library, a place she had never had a reason to visit before now. She wanted to know more science, and since she had watched that documentary, learning more about evolution seemed like the best place to start. Martha wandered until she found a bookcase bursting with science books, and she stood in shock for moment at how many options there were. When she had recovered, she ran her finger over the spines until she found a promising one called _On the Origin of Species._ Pleased with herself, Martha took it from the shelf and headed to the sitting room to read.

Martha had been curled up in a chair reading for an hour when her uncle Lester found her. She didn't bother looking up because she was so enthralled by the book, not even when her uncle stopped right in front of her chair.

" _Martha!_ " Lester suddenly exclaimed in an outraged tone as he snatched the book from her grasp.

"I was reading that!" Martha snapped, reaching for the book, but Lester just moved it out of reach and scowled at the title.

"What are you reading this for?" He demanded, flipping through a page or two. "This stuff isn't for girls."

"I want to read it!" she shouted, the bottom of her stomach beginning to fall away.

"Too bad." And just like that, the book was tucked under his arm, out of her reach. "Ladies do not read science, go play with your dolls."

The kick she delivered to his shins was by no means a good idea, but it felt _great_.

* * *

Some nights, the darkness got to her like a forgotten dream that worried her mind. She lay awake and thought of all the things she could be, if only she wasn't here. She thought of destiny and what the stars must have in store for her, if they had put her there to begin with.

Her family felt like strangers, and the house like a prison.

She would never be the Kane they wanted her to be.

That fact hurt less than she thought it would.

* * *

By age ten, Martha had passed her siblings in every way possible. She out-mastered her older brothers; outpaced them in speed and strength, and completed their schoolbooks after they were done with them in a fraction of the time it took them. She was sneakier than her younger brother, and if she did not want to get caught, she did _not_.

Martha ran around the garden until nobody could keep up. She spent hours in the attic lifting things until she didn't even break a sweat. She read every book in the house, starting with English, then expanding her Yiddish, Hebrew and Spanish after that. She tested her memory, memorizing the numbers of Pi, and the pages of novels until she could recite them perfectly.

Her nights alternated between hours of sheer exhaustion and ghosting throughout the Kane house, trying desperately to find something she was not already good at.

It became harder to find new challenges to master, but she did not give up. She was Martha Kane, and she would succeed no matter what anyone thought.

* * *

"Sometimes I don't know what to do with her," came the murmur from around the corner. Martha always had the habit of wandering at night, but rarely did she come across other people. The kitchen light, however, shone from under the door, and the voice that whispered in the dark was very clearly her mother's.

Martha stilled and pressed against the wall. She leaned forward–because she wanted to know, even if she knew it would hurt.

"If only we'd sent her to boarding school..." her father muttered back, and Martha felt a pull in her chest.

"I doubt they'd have managed to get it out of her." The voices grew fainter, she heard them moving away, but just before they disappeared, she heard—

"She will bring nothing but shame upon this family."

And suddenly, she was reunited with the all-too-familiar feeling of hate.

* * *

Martha cut her hair short in the summer of 1957; she was twelve years old and the stolen scissors trembled in her hands like a heartbeat hidden in the hollow of her long fingers.

She used a long-since neglected hand mirror against the vanity in her bathroom to cut her black locks as close to her skull as she could get. The _snip snip_ of metal accompanied the silent fall of hair to the floor, a rhythm that guided her through the struggle.

The person looking back out at her from the mirror's glass was raw and ugly—closer to the thing she felt inside. There was dirt under her fingernails and bruises on her elbows, grass-stained satin hiding muscles just beginning to develop, and thin, pale lips curled back to reveal the last gap of a lost tooth only just being replaced. She hated what she saw. She loved how it made her feel.

The darkness of the room crept upon Martha; there were sounds in her throat she couldn't quite get out and she wanted to scream, if only to hear something in the silence. The house was a cage and she needed _out_.

She would pay for it—tomorrow, the day after, for as long as it took her hair to grow back, but she was damned no matter what, so she didn't care.

* * *

The stars may have made it destiny for them to meet, but Thomas Wayne and Martha Kane did not cross paths in their youths. The Waynes were not known to attend many parties, and more often than not, only Patrick, the head of the Wayne family, his wife Angelina or his brother Silas attended, without the prodigal son. On the rarest of occasions, Thomas was swiftly sent to talk with the other boys, and Martha's only knew him as a face in passing.

After Silas' death, the Waynes did not grace high society for almost a year, keeping to business and the family estate. When Thomas did make an appearance, he was withdrawn and blank-faced, a silent child without much to say.

Martha knew nothing about him, not being one to listen to gossip, but she could sympathize with him—he was an only child with barely any family or real friends, trapped in a giant house without anything to do.

She was not in the habit of feeling sorry for the aristocrats, but she knew what it felt like to be alone.

* * *

Martha was fourteen in 1959 when her parents caught her handing cash to a woman on the street.

She recalled the argument over and over in her head, spinning words down their tracks so she _remembered_. So she remembered how much it hurt, how much she felt like a failure and she _hated it_.

She hated it like a burn in her veins, this crushing feeling on her ribs, the flare of a sun inside her heart. She burned and burned and _burned_ with her anger.

Such is her curse.

* * *

"You have to stop doing this." Stephen was not that much older than Martha, and he certainly wasn't smarter, but he'd been dutiful and obedient and that's really all their parents had asked for. "All this…this _mess_ you're getting yourself into. It'll destroy you."

"I fail to see a mess," Martha replied. She kept an even pace, but part of her just wanted to _run_ and get away from the conversation.

"You're lying." There was a look in Stephen's eyes, like he'd seen more than just her. "You think you're so smart and have it all together, but you really don't."

"That's rich," she snapped, temper flaring like a heatwave, "considering you could barely finish _high school_."

"This isn't just about me!" He flung his arms up, a deep look in his eyes. "This is about mother and father as well, you know. They can't stand the stuff you do, just _stop_."

"Fuck you." The world shook like an earthquake about to hit, but her feet were steady on the ground. "Fuck you and fuck them."

She didn't look back when she walked away.

* * *

She had a plan.

Martha was sixteen, alone in the attic, as she often was. She had spent more time up there than she cared to admit, reading borrowed books, and lunging about in stretches and exercises. It might have been dusty and dark, but it cooled her anger and frustration and there wasn't more she could ask for.

She wasn't the type to believe in destiny, but she'd worked hard for what little she had, and she was prepared to work harder. She wanted to help her city, wanted to help her people—

(And they are hers, in a way)

—but there was only so much she could do from a gilded tower.

Her most treasured knowledge was that of medicine. She wanted to fix the broken hearts and broken bones of Gotham City, and to do that she needed to know how to _really_ fix people.

A doctor. She would become a doctor.

* * *

Martha always found it difficult to get along with people. Everyone always seemed to see something other than what she really was— some saw a dumb, delicate lady without a mind of her own; a few others saw an ugly beast in a flimsy disguise; most people saw a disturbance in the calm waters of the Kane family that they felt they had to restrain before it grew into a drowning wave.

Naturally that made it impossible for Martha to get close to anyone.

It was easier in some ways to not bother at all with trying to like people, because they obviously didn't like her. The times when Martha wasn't worrying about pleasing people or pretending to be somebody she wasn't, she felt...stronger. She felt better when she could focus on building the fortress that was her body and the universe that was her mind, without having to take down a few a bricks or having to dim a few stars in favour of the people around her.

Besides, no one would ever truly approve of what Martha was making herself into. No one except herself.

Martha was seventeen when she decided she didn't need anyone.

* * *

Martha is eighteen the day she leaves. It's August 1963 and her university acceptance letter is clenched tightly in her fist, the paper crumpled and worn from the amount of times she's read _M. Kane, we are delighted to inform you that you have been accepted..._

She's been packed for days, the clothes she can stand to wear stuffed into a bag nicked from storage. Her money—over a decade of saving—sits comfortably in her bank account. What little she is fond of has been stashed away into pockets, or hidden in the secret spaces of the attic in case she ever returns.

But she's not sure if returning is going to happen now. Halfway to the door her father, Lawrence, looms, his anger evident in his reddened face as a faint tremor runs down his arms.

"What do you think you are doing?" he demands, his voice echoing through the entrance hall of Kane Manor, his considerable stature blocking Martha's path to the front door.

"I'm going to school," Martha replies, forcing herself to start moving again by hefting one bag over her shoulder. "I was accepted into the University of Gotham's medical program." Her resolve counts for something, at least; there was no tremor in her voice when she spoke the words aloud for the first time.

Some cruel expression comes across Lawrence's face—something she's never seen before and doubts she will see again.

" _School?_ " he snarls. "You think you're smart enough to go to school? No daughter of mine is going to embarrass herself and our family like that!"

"Embarrass?" Martha nearly spits back. "I'm damn-well smarter than anyone in this house, and I am going to be a doctor if it _kills me_."

"Even if you pass, you think anyone is going to hire a _girl_?" Lawrence throws back. "There is no place for you anywhere except behind a man!"

The almost-silent shuffle on the carpet announces the presence of Martha's mother, slipping softly onto the sidelines.

"Mother, tell him he's being stupid," Martha asks, almost _begs_ , if she was a begging woman.

" _Martha_." The look Bonnie gives her is pleading, like a dying woman desperate for a source of water. It is a betrayal, quick and heavy, sinking into her bones.

"Right." Martha swallows and breathes in one deep, freezing, earth-shattering breath. "Right."

She leaves.

* * *

It is September 6th, 1963; Martha is eighteen years old, and sitting in a front row seat of the University of Gotham's Pre-Medical Terminology 101 orientation class.

Of the twenty-three students in the room, twenty-two are men.

She can feel them whispering, and herself growing vulnerable. She feels—

(torn in pieces, her father's voice saying _you go out that door you're never coming back_ and her mother weeping because _you're not acting like a lady Martha, ladies don't like these things, stop, stop!_ and her older brother going _you're breaking this family_ and her younger brother saying _just wear the dress, forget about this science stuff, we're rich we don't need to work_ and—)

—alone. She feels so alone.

The professor clears his throat, but just then the door bangs open, one straggler with hurried breath, a loose tie, and ruffled black hair tumbling through.

"Sorry, sorry!" The boy—because he is a boy, the rest are men, he looks even younger than her—rushes forward, shakes the professor's hand, and starts for the seats before most of the new students can collect themselves.

It takes a moment for Martha to realize he is heading straight for her.

No one had sat down by her. They'd given her ugly looks, and directions to simpler classes, then they had by and large avoided her. But the stranger sits himself to her right, dumping a satchel at his feet and giving her a sheepish grin, almost as if he is apologizing.

"I didn't miss anything, did I?" he whispers, trying to be discrete even though half the class is looking at him and she realizes he is the first person since school has started who has asked her anything as if they expect her to know the answer.

"I'm Wayne," he follows, a borderline nervous energy evident behind his eyes. "Thomas Wayne. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt."

"Not at all," she whispers back and coughs, panicking internally because _Thomas Wayne_ , and mostly manages to hide it by focusing on the board the professor begins writing on. "I mean, you didn't miss—you didn't interrupt. Really."

"That's… that's good." He doesn't look at her. He doesn't even lower his gaze from the board as he reaches down to pull out a notebook.

The professor introduces himself as Dorkoff, and after he does she coughs again, this time to catch Thomas' attention. His pencil stops scratching at his paper when she mutters, "Martha."

"What?"

"My name is Martha Kane."

* * *

Thomas is handsome, Martha will give him that, and he isn't stupid either. Of course, he wouldn't have been in the Pre-Med class if he were. But his smile feels as if it will pull apart the carefully made stitches of her armour, like it will bury itself in her chest like a disease. She finds no hints of arrogance or pride in his tone, no swagger of money dripping from every line of his expensive clothes.

"I'm Wayne, Thomas Wayne," he had said on that first day in Pre-Med class.

Sometimes the stars must do what needs to be done.

* * *

 **A/N:** Every time Bruce mentions his parents in canon, he's always talking about how nice his father was. I have henceforth headcanoned that he must get his more... intense personality traits from his mother. Apparently the surname "Kane" means "war like". Go figure.

Next chapter will be focusing on Thomas and the beginning of their relationship.


End file.
